


speed of dark

by Elendraug



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 03:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12182484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: until the morning, it's all right.





	speed of dark

**Author's Note:**

> I have loved these two for a very long time
> 
> This fic sat nearly complete for a year, but was honestly around a decade in the making as far as emotional investment goes, so it's good to see it through
> 
> This is set just before XSI but refers to the rest of the series; there are spoilers but who's still here reading who isn't aware of the spoilers at this point
> 
> Thanks to those who helped beta read, you guys rock
> 
> ♫ [speed of dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjO8MTeVVGg) \- emilíana torrini 
> 
> &
> 
> ♫ [until the morning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvlNy8CdlIY%20) \- thievery corporation

The door to Gaignun’s room opens with a soft mechanical swishing. It’s late, as far as the artificial nighttime on the Foundation is concerned. Ambient light from the surrounding buildings shines through in a white stripe where the curtains are parted. It catches on the rich wood surfaces of the desk and pool table, the polish shining.

Jr is silhouetted by the faint fluorescent glow in the hall, all of it dimmed for evening hours save for the backup panels that perpetually guard this space in case of an emergency. He knows he’s welcome here, without invitation, but he sends out a tentative telepathic inquiry all the same, as gentle as a hand on a shoulder.

_Can I come in?_

The initial response is biologically akin to feeling within his mind as an electronic device comes online again, out of standby. There’s brief disoriented feedback, but nothing so harsh as a startled reaction. The verbal reply he gets, however, is mumbled aloud into the quiet of the room. 

“Of course.”

Jr. lets the door close behind him, and slides off the sandals he wore to walk down the hall before he sits down on the bed. Gaignun scoots over to accommodate him, pushed closer to the wall than he’d normally sleep. His clothing at night is a departure from his daily business attire. The _Iron 3_ t-shirt is well-worn with age, and the sleeves are maybe a touch too taut on his upper arms.

Jr.’s own choice of sleepwear is a spare standard-issue grey tank he’s permanently borrowed from the Elsa crew, now that he’s spent enough time with them to feel justified in wearing it. Unlike Gaignun, the shirt’s too loose on him, and he has to tug the strap back onto his shoulder as he lies down. Besides that, they’ve both got boxers; after a childhood of mandatory medical examinations at any hour they were deemed necessary, it’s still too vulnerable to sleep unclothed. These days, they don’t wear a lot of blue.

As Jr. curls an arm over Gaignun’s side, they slip into the familiar exchange of alternated telepathy and spoken words.

 _Another nightmare?_ Gaignun’s voice is soothing, no matter the form it takes.

Jr. hugs him tightly, his fingers splayed securely over Gaignun’s ribs through the cotton of his shirt. His enunciation is affected by the occlusal guard fitted to his lower teeth. “The usual.”

“Miltia.”

_Vaguely, yeah._

“I’m listening.” Gaignun lifts his hand to rest over Jr.’s, his red-inked model number difficult to discern in the darkness but still skipped to sequential, still present as it’s laid flat over Jr.’s knuckles. “If you want to tell me.”

“It’s depressing,” Jr. huffs, speaking into the short hair at the nape of Gaignun’s neck. 

_Miltia always is._

_Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth._

There’s a long moment in which they hold each other, with no noise except the HVAC’s diligent circulation. All around, far below, are the rocking motions of the waves on the synthetic shore. Gaignun smells slightly like dry cleaning, and Jr. breathes deeply, his face ducked to Gaignun’s shoulder, with no reason yet to be preoccupied with inhaling anyone’s particular molecules.

"I dreamt you were dying,” Jr. says, at last.

_Most of us are._

Jr. is silent for a beat, then elaborates on the details without acknowledging anything else he might be worried about. “You were shot up, like you always are.”

“So it’s that one again.”

_Yeah._

Gaignun shifts and lets out a slow sigh.

“But this time, it was different,” Jr. continues. “It wasn’t us from back then.”

“No?”

“It was us from right now.”

_Hm._

“And this time, I couldn’t carry you.”

Gaignun rubs the pad of his thumb on Jr.’s wrist and sends him a wave of mixed emotions, with sympathy predominating.

“You were shot and bleeding, and you needed me.” Jr. tenses his fingertips into the fabric of Gaignun’s shirt. _But you were too heavy._

Gaignun laces his fingers with Jr.’s, but it doesn’t fit quite right. The wider spacing is awkward, no matter how much they wish it wasn’t, and he soon returns his hand to its former position.

“And I tried so fucking hard,” Jr. says, his voice too distressed for the otherwise comfortable stillness of Gaignun’s room. “I kept trying to haul you up, to get you to someone who could help, but I couldn’t lift you.”

Gaignun is as aware of Jr.’s pulse through their link as he is from feeling it where Jr.’s chest is pressed to his back. Gaignun’s own heartbeat is only on one side, ever. He moves Jr.’s hand to bring it towards his face, and kisses the numerals on his palm, speaks against them. “You don’t have to carry me anymore.”

“You can’t just rule that out, though.” Jr. can feel Gaignun exhale from his nose and onto his hand. It’s tangible proof he’s alive, but nothing he tells himself can dislodge the imagery from his mind’s eye. “It’s not that simple. What if that’s what it comes down to?”

_Then we’ll just have to lean on each other._

_If anyone else said that, I’d laugh in their face._ His heart is still racing, solely on the left side. The right side holds steady, unaffected. _But you’re serious, aren’t you?_

“You know that I am.”

“Sheesh.” Jr. clicks his tongue. “You’ve always been like this.”

_A smartass?_

Jr. snorts. “I was gonna say ‘sincere,’ but that, too.”

Gaignun moves Jr.’s hand away from his lips and up to his cheek. Jr.’s fingertips have more calluses than Gaignun’s from pistols instead of paperwork, and fourteen years of the same skin cells.

It’s been a decade since Gaignun’s held a gun, and he’s on record with no intention of fighting with weaponry instead of words. For Jr., it’s a toss-up for whether holding his hand is more comforting than holding a handgun, too close to call; the truth is that nothing makes him feel safe at night.

“You know, they told me to wear the guard when I felt stressed,” Jr. says, sardonic. “I’ve almost chewed through this thing.”

Jr. can feel Gaignun’s mouth move into a frown. “We can go to the dentist tomorrow.”

 _Christ, I can’t fucking wait for that._ He pulls his hand away from Gaignun’s face and curls his arm over his chest again. “I can’t wait to be asked again what I want to do about my fucking baby bicuspid that just won’t seem to ever come loose, that’s got all this inexplicable wear on its enamel.”

Jr. feels his forehead get tense, furrowed with discomfort as he screws his eyes shut. A wave of worry washes over him, and with it comes Gaignun rolling over to face him.

Gaignun doesn’t say anything, not even over the link. It’s enough to make himself available, open, and he tucks his head beneath Jr.’s chin, exhaling onto his sternum. Jr. gathers him into a fiercely protective hug, determined to extend his reach enough to shield Gaignun from anyone or anything that would harm him.

_I’m sorry._

_For what?_

Jr. tilts his head down, to kiss the crown of Gaignun’s head. _For when we were kids._

“You don’t need to apologize for that, or for anything.” Gaignun’s words are quiet against his collarbone. “But if you feel like you need to, all the same, I accept your apology.”

“I should’ve been stronger for you,” Jr. mumbles, into his hair. “For all of us.”

Gaignun shakes his head, his short bangs ticklish on Jr.’s skin. “You were young. You’re human. You did the best you could.”

_My bad judgment cost a lot of lives._

_You made a mistake._ Gaignun runs his hand up along Jr.’s back, flat to his spine, and lets it press reassuringly between his shoulder blades. _Making a mistake doesn’t make you weak._

He’s bitter when he snaps, and he knows it’s unfair. “Tell it to the dead.”

The link surges with a sense of desperation, and he knows Gaignun is begging. _You have to forgive yourself._

His throat is tight.

When Gaignun repeats it, it’s out loud, with his fingertips tangled in the strap of the Elsa tank top. “You _have_ to forgive yourself.”

Nausea nestles into his stomach, and his resentment is directed inward when he speaks. “I can’t.”

“You haven’t let me down,” Gaignun adds, also aloud for emphasis. “For whatever that’s worth.”

The reaction his statement evokes is a sudden gush of guilt, self-loathing welling up like the head on beer poured too hastily into a glass, the froth rising rushed to edge closer to the lip, watched close as it’s an instant away from tipping into too much and making a mess of everything. Jr. swallows it down, throttles the lump in his throat, and cradles the curve of Gaignun’s skull with his marked palm.

“I won’t leave you behind,” he whispers, stuck on the residual resonance of his mind’s eye.

“I know you won’t,” Gaignun assures him. “You haven’t.”

_I promise._

Jr. gives the words a weight he can’t communicate through the air, laden with the rarity of the statement and the burden of their shared history. There’s one he broke without ever making, an impossible task for a mortal human lifetime. There’s another he’s hellbent on keeping, sworn in a subconscious domain, without yet having the opportunity to follow through. If the third time’s the charm, he could use the luck.

 _I don’t disbelieve you._ Gaignun lifts his head to breathe cooler air, tucks his chin against Jr.’s shoulder, rests his temple against Jr’s. neck. _There’s no need to be heartsick over this._

_My heart’s got nothing to do with it._

Gaignun shifts to press his lips below Jr.’s jawline, as if to soothe the panic at his pulse point. “Allow yourself to rest.”

Jr. doesn’t shift away, but doesn’t shift the topic, either. “I don’t want to think about who owns my organs.”

“You.” Gaignun settles back in against him. “No one else.”

“He’s got me on a technicality.” The covers seem too cold. Jr. fidgets with his feet against the fitted sheet until there’s kinetic warmth. “But you’ve got my mind, and that’s what matters.”

Gaignun shrinks in on himself, the link between them retreating as he closes his eyes, hides his face in Jr.’s chest. He seldom seems this small. “I would never ask that of you.”

“That’s why I trust you.” Jr.’s heart rate accelerates, anxious, the nightmares and nasty memories still twisting within his ribs. He holds Gaignun as much as he’s holding onto him. “That’s how I know.”

The fabric of Jr.’s tank bunches between Gaignun’s fingers. “I don't expect you to let me be that close.”

“I don’t want us to be.”

Gaignun presses his nose into the cloth until all he can smell is detergent and body heat. He nods.

“Nobody should be that close,” Jr. says, stroking Gaignun’s hair as a deliberate attempt to calm both of them down. “Not all the time.”

“Everyone else was.”

_So?_

_They hated us for it._

“They…” Jr.’s hesitant to confirm the hatred aimed so consistently in their direction from the standard URTVs, whom he refuses to think of as _units_ , even now. Maybe especially now. “It was what they knew.”

Gaignun says nothing. The HVAC whirs as it slows down and turns off.

“We got to be who we are,” Jr. continues, unprompted, aware that Gaignun’s silence is indicative of his attention. “We got to be our own selves.”

“Is that all that makes us separate people?” Gaignun runs his hand around to Jr.’s back, beneath the tank top, at his right side. “Genetics?”

There’s no malice to the statement. It’s not the present two of them that he’s referring to, and Jr. knows it. “It’s not just that.”

Gaignun scratches his nails lightly on Jr.’s skin, and knows the cells will come back exactly the same, healthy, with telomeres in check. _This is killing you._

“He’s not coming back,” Jr. says, flat, resolute.

Gaignun won’t give voice to whatever he’s thinking, but there’s enough of a low hum of disquiet through the link for Jr. to take a shot in the dark.

“I don’t want you to be my twin.” Jr. pets his hair, keeping him close. He’s glad they’re facing each other; he doesn’t like sleeping back to back. Not anymore. “I want you to be you.”

_I don’t ever want to hurt you._

“I know you won’t,” Jr. echoes back, smiling. _You haven’t._

With the air movement stopped, the room itself is at peace. Even as adults, the size of it all is damn near excessive, with a bed far larger than the bunks they were issued when they were being inventoried as property. Every morning, Gaignun insists on making it himself, to grip the genuine cotton with its generous threadcount, to make up for the years of tucking a single synthetic sheet beneath the hem of a sparse single mattress. Likewise, his shelves are deliberately adorned with painstakingly chosen keepsakes: modern, antique, and ancient, and all items he would never have realized existed if he’d never left the Institute. 

Because of this, it seems like a shame to shape this space into a location associated with resurfaced trauma, but it’s shame that spurs it on. The moment hangs, years of self-imposed secrecy so easy to topple into the open, to slip off—like dress shoes toed off after a long day, or toeing the edge of so much high-rise construction in need of inspection. Like drawing the curtains a second too slowly, leery of paparazzi, a misstep away from political suicide. Like watching debris from historic methodology scuff beneath the soles, crumble off the side and land below, thinking _Thanatos_ and daring his weight not to draw him down, before stepping back.

Gaignun recoils almost entirely, lets audible speech carry all his connotations, so as not to overwhelm Jr. when his guard is down, when he can’t know to brace for this impact Gaignun has shielded on his behalf until now.

Jr.’s fingernails are scratching on his scalp. Jr. can’t know, until he does.

“Dad built me to kill you.”

All motion halts in physical space; the mental link flares with panic, sending feedback in abundance, and receiving a trickle of data in return. What little filters through is carefully curated, as much as anything else that’s taken a permanent residence in this room. 

Jr.’s reply is breathy, unsure. “What?”

The incredulity is enough to weaken his resolve, and Gaignun’s fears leak out, carrying his own guilt, the crush of inevitability, the self-doubt, _l’appel du vide_ , a frantic need to be a forgiven fail-safe instead of an unwitting assassin. His words are choked. It’s too painful, with Jr.’s hand in his hair. “If you went out of control.”

“Oh, god.” Jr.’s still processing it, still piecing through it as he pulls Gaignun’s shaking shoulders towards him. “ _God_ , you could’ve told me.”

“I couldn’t.” Gaignun shakes his head, the movement limited by the weight of his skull against the mattress. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you looking at me differently, or having to worry—”

Jr. squeezes around his back, to shut down the notion, but not to shush him. “I don’t want to think about you like that.”

“I don’t want to _be_ that.”

“Then that’s what matters. That’s what’s important.”

It’s one thing to hear it, but another to believe it. Gaignun feels small, helpless, standing at the sidelines on standby as Jr. assumes the role of assuaging these horrors by his lonesome, able to perform a sort of confidence for a boardroom but constantly at a loss for how to handle it when it roots into his deepest-set anxieties.

“You don’t want to kill people,” Jr. continues, setting aside their shared conscription as soldiers. “That’s what matters.”

Gaignun turns his face towards the sheets, and the sensation of cold metal beneath shivering hands strikes Jr. in that moment, backed against an industrial door, afraid and cornered and furious; of trembling fingers on the trigger, of screaming so loudly he still can’t drown out the sound of the discharge.

Jr. sifts through these gleaned glimpses, taking stock of the mental footage, and shudders when he realizes.

“Is that why you, that morning–”

“Yes.”

Jr. tamps his bite down onto the nightguard, his molars scantly protected from damaging themselves through repetitive force, swallows saliva, exhales. He tilts his head down, his nose again in Gaignun’s hair, arms around him just as steadfast as before, and now with more urgency. He stares at the headboard, willing the hitch in his breath away, blinking to keep himself from crying. It doesn’t quite work.

The heartbeat on the right side of his ribcage speeds up, panicked at this perceived threat, decoupled from the routine syncopation of his left side. The arrhythmia has him sick from it, short of breath, forced to feed effort into this extraneous organ, carcinogenic with no viable option to curtail it.

“We have to stop,” he gasps. “It’s too much.”

Gaignun’s mind opens to him again, head tucked beneath Jr.’s chin before he shifts back, spurred into action by the frantic pace of Jr.’s second pulse. He lifts his hand to touch Jr.’s face, to press their foreheads together, as if the proximity affected the psychic. They both know it’s to strengthen the significance, not the impact, and Gaignun’s presence in his perception is akin to a delicate motion, a deft hand steadying him, holding him still to isolate the shock and anxiety and soothe it away, to keep him in place with utmost gentleness as one might pull a splinter from skin. Gaignun lets the moment linger, with Jr.’s hand gripping tightly to his upper arm, where the sleeve meets his muscle, exhausted by the cancerous cardiac burden that’s weighed heavily on him since his artificial birth. With Gaignun’s guidance, he can curb the clenching in his chest, enough to calm himself, but with the ever-present nature of his circumstance, it only goes so far.

“I need air,” Jr. says, knowing that Gaignun will know.

 _Tomorrow._ His breath is quick and out through his nose, onto Jr.’s face, typically unpleasant but reassuring in this instance. “We can go to the beach.”

Jr. keeps his eyes closed, wetness welling at his lashes, and nods. The saltwater is the closest approximation to an ocean they can manufacture, deliberate, meticulous, and he’s long felt a kinship with its designed and alleged perfection, although its moods are his to control, and he’s still struggling to gain a semblance of ownership of his own.

It all takes time.

“That’s what she’d want.” He states it plainly, desperate not to dwell on it. “That’s what she’d want for us, even if she can’t go. Even if _he_ can’t.”

Gaignun nods in agreement, and it’s Jr. who kisses him, with a tendency to take the lead. Gaignun returns it, long enough to assure him he’s not rebuffing the affection, and then shifts to slide his head beneath his chin again, to recapture the sense of being secure.

“It’s not a competition,” Gaignun says, diplomatic as ever. “You don’t have to choose.”

Jr. fends off the ferocious resurgence of his second heartbeat. “What’s to choose?”

And Gaignun kisses him then, cautious and kind, mouthing words on the skin at his larynx but speaking them through their link. _I’m here._

“At the risk of being melodramatic,” Jr. says, intent, “chaos said we were Famine and War.”

Gaignun can feel the reverberations of his spoken words against his mouth, but says nothing, and waits for Jr. to go on.

“I don’t want to fight you.” He speaks into Gaignun’s hair and kisses his scalp. “And I don’t want you to be attention-starved.”

_Good thing we’re not horsemen._

It’s ludicrous, in a way, to hearken back to something so Biblical, as if the rest of the worlds haven’t abandoned that book long ago, as if _Revelation_ had relevance. Jr. allows himself to settle in against Gaignun, to simply exist in this space they’ve crafted for themselves, to be in a bed that’s all their own.

“Yeah,” he agrees, stating it for the record, for the benefit of the night air around them, for himself, without mythologies. “We’re not.”

* * *

[ ](https://i.imgur.com/zvejEzy.jpg)


End file.
